Today, August 2, the planet enters an ecological deficit. It is Earth Overcapacity Day, a day that marks the date on which humanity runs out of the renewable natural resources that it can produce in a year. In other words, humanity today exhausts the budget it has to take advantage of these resources without mortgaging the ability of ecosystems to regenerate throughout the cloth. From now on, paying off these demands means depleting natural capital and increasing the ecological debt.
All this accounting is the demonstration that we consume more natural resources than the planet is capable of regenerating.
The celebration of this August 2 is the result of the original calculator of the international organization Global Footprint Network, which has placed this calculation on an annual calendar to visualize this growing debt to the planet.
This is one of the most rigorous approaches to measure countries' natural resource deficits, a goal intended to help economies operate within planetary limits.
To carry out this calculation, the research takes into account the ecological footprint (that is, the demand and consumption of natural resources) and the natural regeneration capacity of ecosystems (biocapacity). And after establishing this relationship, the number that allows placing it on the calendar is obtained.
Almost every year, as a general rule, the date on which this ecological equilibrium is exceeded has been brought forward, although the pressure on natural resources decreased in the financial crisis of 2007 or during the pandemic, all of which have made this date been oscillating
This year, however, as new data has been incorporated with independent information on the 180 monitored countries, it is concluded that the date of overcapacity has been delayed five days compared to 2022 (when it was July 28). The Global Footprint Network organization specifies that this delay is fundamentally a methodological correction and that the real and effective improvement would be only one day.
During the last 5 years the trend has flattened. "It is difficult to discern how much of this is due to the economic slowdown or deliberate efforts to decarbonise the economy," says this organization.
Even so, the reduction of this overpressure is too slow," adds this entity.
To achieve the goal of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (PCC) of reducing global carbon emissions by 43% by 2030, it would be necessary to bring forward the Day of the Overcapacity of the planet 19 days a year during the next seven years, recalls Enrique Segovia, head of Conservation at WWF.
All this evaluation has been carried out since 1971, when the consumption of ecological resources (forest, agricultural, marine and other productive areas) were practically in parallel with the planet's capacity to regenerate them (last weeks of December). Fifty years later, the world consumes all that capacity in the first half of the year.
However, the behavior is by no means the same in all countries. Germany and France, the two main powers in Europe, exhausted their ecological resources on May 4 and 5.
There are countries that have literally "attributed the right to consume the future of future generations", such as Qatar, which already reached its Overshoot Day on February 10, or Luxembourg, on February 14, while Canada, the United States or the Emirates United Arabs reach it all on March 13, that is, they consumed the resources that they would have available for a whole year in the space of two and a half months.
Spain entered into an ecological deficit on May 12, as in 2022, 13 days earlier than in 2021 (May 25). The date has been brought forward year after year: in 2018 it was June 11; in 2019, on May 29; and 2020 was May 27.
Overcapacity Day serves to remember that the current model of production and consumption is one of the main causes of the climate crisis and unprecedented destruction of biodiversity, recalls WWF. "That is why it is urgent to promote an economic recovery taking into account the limits of the planet," adds this organization
“In Spain, for example, advances are made only during economic crisis years. The pandemic was a clear example of how when global activity stopped, this footprint was reduced. We have development and growth coupled with the consumption of natural resources. We must live well with less," says Enrique Segovia, WWF Conservation Director.
According to data from the Global Footprint Network (GFN), our use of natural resources is 1.75 times faster than ecosystems can regenerate. In other words, to satisfy our consumption rate, humanity requires 1.75 planets similar to the one that it inhabits and mistreats.
Experts point out that the effects of this accumulating ecological deficit are already being seen in the form of deforestation, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity and the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Entering into an ecological deficit means that we not only consume the annual "interest" of our natural capital, but also exhaust it, taking resources from the future to pay for the present, denounces this international organization.
The ecological footprint has been estimated (resources consumed) has been estimated at 2.8 hectares per capita, which is the estimated global area that is needed to cover the demands and consumption of resources (food, forest resources, pastures, fish, and urbanization). and urban infrastructure), including the forest space needed to neutralize greenhouse gas emissions. However, in the case of Spain it reaches 4 global hectares.
Global Footprint Network executive director Steven Tebbe warns that persistent overexploitation leads to increasingly significant symptoms, such as unusual heat waves, wildfires, droughts and floods, with the risk of compromising food production.
Simple changes could move the overcapacity date significantly, the organization says. Increasing the share of low-carbon electricity sources from 39% to 75% would move it 26 days and halving food waste would gain 13 days
